OT: Dell Laptop For Sale

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 3:01 PM, Nicholas Leippe <nick at leippe.com> wrote:
> Yes, hard drives and optical drives are cheap and easy to replace, but
> video chips are not.
>> So, expecting to replace a hard drive or optical drive in a used
> laptop is one thing, but the motherboard is quite another.
> Knowing that the video chip is already known defective, and more
> likely to fail than in a model where it is not defective, could be a
> valuable data point to decision making in such a purchase. That's my
> only point.
>
Sorry to burst everyone's bubble but it is slightly easier to fix
because he got the NVIDIA GPU instead of the Intel GPU. The Intel GPU
is integrated while the NVIDIA GPU is listed as "discrete video card".
Of course that does mean that you have to get a replacement card made
for that model, but it would be easier than replacing the entire
motherboard.
The following URL takes you directly to the specs for the video card
options on that model.
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins1520/en/om_en/html/specs.htm#wp1101163
Thank goodness it isn't an ATI video card on a Dell laptop. The mobile
ones on Dell computers only have half of the RAM on the card with the
other half coming from the system memory.